“Frost at Midnight” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Frost at Midnight” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a free verse poem.  There are twenty-two lines in the first stanza, twenty-one lines in the next two stanzas and then ten lines in the last stanza.  In the second stanza there is a ceasura at the beginning where it says “But O!”   It is an end-stopped poem.  The poem is euphonious which is it has easy and nice sounds.  Very soft as to note the stillness and silence of the night.

This poem reminded me of my sister.  She is one year old and she fights sleep.  If I have her for the night, I have to work hard to get her to sleep.  She will fight and fight just not wanting to miss anything.  Finally when I do get her to sleep, it seems almost too quiet in the house to be good.  Once she goes to sleep its so nice because she is finally exhausted and will sleep good and so am I.  Its a nice time to admire her beautifulness and laugh about how she is getting a personality. 

I didn’t fully understand this poem, but that could be because I’m a bit tired.  The word choice he uses is spectacular, even if it doesn’t all make sense to me.  At the end of the second stanza, when he is talking, I think, about his dream, it almost sounds like Alice in Wonderland.  After awhile it goes back to the baby and how the baby is precious.  I have always wondered what it feels like to be a parent.  I mean, I’ve been a big sister for 11 of my 18 years and feeling the overwhelming of loving my siblings so much is amazing.  I can imagine what a parent feels knowing they made this special gift that they are holding.

“Prayer” by Henry David Thoreau

“Prayer” by Henry David Thoreau is an aa bb rhyme scheme.  He seems to have repetition with “That” in the beginning of many lines, and “I may” also.  There are three stanzas and the first two stanzas have four lines and the last has six.  There is proper punctuation in each line. 

This poem, or better yet a prayer, can mean many different things depending on the person and the situation at hand.  He is saying, “please let me be proud that I have made the right decision, especially when I know I will upset my friends.”  He is asking to be strong during this time in need.  I took it kind of like a teen trying to help a friend.  The friend may be using drugs and the one asking for this strength just found out about it.  This person knows that they would be helping their friend by telling someone to get them help.  But on the other hand, this friend will be angry and possible not want to be friends at all.  The person is caught between friendship and helping someone they care about.  I think that I would tell because I would rather that person be angry with me and never talk to me again than that person be dead or close to it.  They would be able to live their lives, with or without me in it. 

Maybe I percieved this poem incorrectly, but this thought was the first to pop into my head after reading it.  Its almost like those commercials about “Above the Influence”  where the dog says “I want my friend back.”  Even if the person wasn’t your friend for a long time, maybe sometime they will thank you for saving them before they were too far in.